Laurie

At the age of 45, I was diagnosed with stage 1A breast cancer. I went through five weeks of radiation, and was taking Tamoxifen. I was supposed to be at a very low risk [of reoccurrence].

Almost three years later, the day before my birthday, I fell and broke my shoulder. This is when I found out it had metastasized to my bones. I had to have half my humerus replaced from the shoulder down with a metal rod. I just finished radiation on both shoulders and my right femur hip area.

Yesterday, I started Ibrance. Hopefully this will stop the cancer from going anywhere else.

“Mr. Marcus, you have kidney, lung, and brain cancer. Stage 4. We are going to monitor you for the next 24 hours but there is not much we can do for you here. You need to go home and start making arrangements. At most, you have two years to live.”

I had a red circle on the right side of my breast, and I had lost twenty pounds despite the fact that I was not on a diet. When I went to the doctor their tests couldn’t find anything wrong, so I told them to check out this red spot.

My husband was diagnosed with Stage 3 Renal Cell Carcinoma (RCC). He had a total left nephrectomy on our 35th wedding Anniversary on Sept. 10, 2012. At that time there was no treatment that was available.